Come Unto Christ

A Little Update

I've personally been on a spiritual journey while trying to come to know God and it has led me to places that I never thought that I would have to go, Hell being one of them.

The last few months have certainly been the hardest months of my life and that's saying something because my mission trip was no walk in the park.  In fact, the two years I was in Nicaragua were the darkest two years of my life up until that point, but I'll save some of those stories for another time.

What's Been On My Mind

Have you ever heard the song "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief"?  Or maybe you've heard that Christ was a man "acquainted with grief"?

I used to think that meant that He had helped so many people, or that He had suffered for us, so, naturally, He understood what we were going through.  My perspective on that has changed a little, though.

Now, however, I tend to think that He knew grief because He knew The Father and was guided by Him and nobody else understood.  Nobody understood or accepted the path that God had asked Him to take.  Rather, they were offended, calling him all sorts of things, speaking terribly to others about the things He did, even if they were incredibly kind things.  His closest friends and family even reprimanded Him for speaking of the mission that The Father gave Him.

Who would have accepted it, though?  Nobody really could see what was going on.  Nobody asked to know.

Where I'm At

Now, I feel as though I have only started on that same path and it seems as if the whole world is trying to chew me up and spit me out, rejecting every bit of kindness that I have tried to show, and calling me a liar, two-faced, or fake. This hasn't been done in so many words, but people have definitely doubted my authenticity and turned bitter because of it.  I'm not bitter, though.  If the tables had been turned, I would probably have responded the same.  I don't really expect anyone to understand, though I wish they would.

I've done so many things that The Lord has asked me to do that I, not even in my wildest dreams, had imagined doing-things ranging from purchasing a lottery ticket (I swore in my youth that I would never gamble) to telling the person I considered to be my best friend that I couldn't involve myself in their life anymore.  One thing I've learned is that He will break your heart to set you straight, and sometimes, he'll do it the same way multiple times, because you didn't learn the darned lesson He wanted you to learn in the first place.

I've found that He will ask you to give up what is most important to you to show your love to Him.  Hard stuff, eh?  It doesn't get easier.  Whoever said that life and love were easy never knew God.

I want to add some of my own thoughts to 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.  This chapter talks about Charity.  Now, when reading this, I like to change the words from "Have not Charity" to "do not love Christ".  See what happens for you when reading it.  It's pretty cool.  Before, I'd always known charity to be the quality of love we should express towards those around us, but I've learned that the pure love 'of' Christ is really just pure love 'for' Christ, and that when we love Christ as He asked us in John 14:15, we become like Him, loving all people and animals and things just as He did. Whereas, when we just decide to love everyone the way we think we should without involving Christ, we lose His perspective, and then we aren't really doing anything here.

One thing I ought to mention is that love doesn't always look like what we want it to.  In fact, I'm pretty sure the Pharisees would have considered it loving towards them had Christ just joined up with them in their skewed up thoughts and beliefs about God and such, as with the Sadducees, and basically any other religious/political group that existed in that time.  They would ask God to conform to their ideas before taking the time and effort (because it takes a heck of a lot of both) to find out who He is, or before taking into consideration that God and love might be different from what they thought, but no.  That would be just too scary.  It would be too scary to admit that they were wrong and that they didn't really know much at all.

This Is What I Know

I feel as if I know so little, and yet, I know that even that little that I do know is true, because Christ Himself has confirmed it to me.  No, I'm not saved, because He says I still have a lot to do, but I am coming to know Him, and I believe that I will be saved, one day.

I've seen Him twice.  I know that He lives.  I know He loves us.  I know that The Book of Mormon teaches us the Pure and Simple Doctrine of Jesus Christ, and many more things.  I know that Joseph Smith was called of God to teach us about the covenants that God made with prophets past.  I know that God asks us to do the hardest things that we could ever imagine.

I know He's waiting for us, arms wide open.

There are a few other things I know, but that's about it.  Everything else remains a mystery to me.


I love you all,

Dallin Hughes

Also, please be ready for some more posts coming your way.

I have more stories to tell.